1. Field of the Invention
This specification relates to a robot cleaner capable of precisely recognizing its position with using an upper camera, and a controlling method of the same.
2. Background of the Invention
Generally, a robot has been developed for an industrial use, and has managed some parts of factory automation. As the robot is applied to various fields recently, medical robots, space robots, home robots, etc. are being developed.
A representative of the home robot is a robot cleaner, a kind of home electronic appliance capable of performing a cleaning operation by sucking peripheral dust or foreign materials with autonomously moving on a predetermined region. This robot cleaner is provided with a chargeable battery, and is provided with an obstacle sensor for avoiding an obstacle while moving.
In order for the robot cleaner to clean all regions while autonomously moving, a cleaning map has to be made, and a cleaning region on the cleaning map has to be categorized into a region to be cleaned or a region having been cleaned. This determination is generally performed by a precise control performance of the robot cleaner.
While the robot cleaner performs a cleaning operation, may occur a mechanical problem such as wheel detachment or a user's intervention such as a dust box replacement and a rag (dust cloth) replacement. This may result in a forcible stopping of the cleaning operation. In this case, the robot cleaner may not recognize its position even if it re-starts to perform the cleaning operation after the causes of the stopping of the cleaning operation have been removed. Most of users remove the causes of the stopping of the cleaning operation, and then puts the robot cleaner on an arbitrary position. Then, the users press a cleaning start button. In this case, the robot cleaner having a relative position recognition sensor has a difficulty in recognizing its current position. As a result, the robot cleaner is not capable of distinguishing a cleaned region and a non-cleaned region from each other. This may cause the robot cleaner to repeatedly perform a cleaning operation on a cleaned region, or to re-start to perform a cleaning operation based on its current position.